10 questions for...

10 questions for Innolend

1. Who are you, where is your headquarter and how many employees do you have?Innolend was founded in early 2016 by Niklas Lechner, Christian Wöhlke, Sebastian Lechner and Aleksander Heimrath. Headquarted in Berlin, our team counts around 10 colleagues.

2. Which problem do you solve with your startup? And how?We are Innolend - Germany’s first online lending platform which offers a flexible asset-based lending product to SMEs, allowing them to finance their account receivables. Our mission is to revolutionize the way SME’s can finance their working capital.

3. How did you come up with the idea of founding Innolend?The current industry offers secured products in an inefficient, old-fashioned and non-digital way. We saw the problem that most German B2B SME businesses are facing DSO (days sales outstanding) of 36 days on average; The resulting funding gaps are the number one reason for bankruptcy in Germany. We want to solve this issue by providing an asset-based lending product with which SMEs can finance outstanding invoices in a fast, flexible, and debtor-friendly way.

4. What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome at the outset?Getting trust from the market as well as setting up the legal framework in cooperation with our partner bank.

5. What was your greatest success so far?Gaining a tremendous market acceptance for our new service.

6. Suppose an investor gave you 250.000 Euro, what would you do with the money?Thank him for the trust and ask for more to scale our business to the next level.

7. What was the most valuable advice, somebody gave to you during your in your early days?Check product-market fit from day one and iterate fast and on a continuously basis.

8. Let´s say, you could be the Governing Mayor of Berlin for one day, what would you tackle?Support FinTechs to truly democratize the access to capital for SME.

9. When signing up for VentureZphere, what were your expectations?Finding new ways of partnerships

10. Finally, where do you see Innolend in five years?Innolend will be a renowned company for SME finance in Europe.